My thoughts are messy, my emotions are messy, my body goes in and out at will. The raised white scars on my arms and legs are the only aspect of my being that comes close to minimalism. They came from chaos, but it is hard to carve frustration and unease into the flesh. Only straight lines.

I'm in love with someone good and kind and gentle, and he's seen the darkness too, but somehow we've become each other's light.

Yes, I have patterns of love addiction. But I'm a woman. Of course I do.

When he kisses me, I cry. I explain it's not because I wish he were someone else, it's because it's such a shock to the system to be desired after feeling so completely abandoned.

Your own love story? Your paramour may have had lovers before you. But no one has ever loved him the way you do. No one has ever heard music. Not the way you hear it. The songs are beautiful vampires, asleep in your iPod, coming alive at night, aglow. You can have them on your hours, yours to conduct. Music shapes us and we shape it.

Cyndi Lauper was hilarious and generous, someone I'd loved from childhood who didn't disappoint.

I think that's the function of a lot of psychiatrists and therapists, is keeping people afloat just long enough for them to get older.